Lady Gaga - Abracadabra

0:00You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishikesh Hirway. This episode is brought to you by Booking.com. I've been to a few national parks over the years, and it's always been a pretty magical experience. I've been to Yosemite and Joshua Tree here in California. Those are some of the closest ones to me. But I've been wondering about taking a trip to one that's maybe not so close. And last year, I started looking at some lists ranking some of the most beautiful national parks. And one that's come up on a few of the lists is Glacier National Park in Montana.

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1:15Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try it at Progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states. Lady Gaga is a singer, songwriter, producer, and actress from New York. She's one of the biggest artists in the world. She's also won 14 Grammys, two Golden Globes, and an Oscar. And in March 2025, she released her sixth album, Mayhem. For this episode, I talked to her about a song from that album called Abracadabra.

1:54She co-wrote it and co-produced it with Andrew Watt and Circuit, and they recorded it in Rick Rubin's studio, Shangri-La. That's also where we recorded the interview for this episode, which happens to be the 300th episode of the podcast. Here it is.

2:29My name is Lady Gaga. Before we get into the specifics of the song itself, I was wondering if as you were going into making this album, if there were any big picture ideas that you were thinking about or aiming for? Well, I will say that returning to my earlier sound, what I discovered kind of on the Lower East Side when I was first making music, that was something that I was excited about. What was behind that? What made you want to go back to your earlier days? You know, I expressed the darkness I felt as a young person through music, like my whole life. And it was scary. And I felt that around me for a really long time.

3:17So my earliest records were kind of dark and they embodied live instrumentation with electronic music. But over time, I just artistically was going in lots of new musical directions exploring myself. And then music became a business, which was not why I did this. So when I decided to make this album, I think I was just wanting to reclaim something that made me me. And my partner, Michael, was like, you know, you don't have to be afraid of your darkness anymore because you've really gotten a handle on it. Like, it's okay to go back there. So it was important to me, how do I get myself back? How can I make all of these dreams, these like gothic fantasies that I have in music, how can I make them real, but that I don't have to wreck myself?

4:23I think trusting myself that I could make a dark album and that I would be okay was a big piece of it. Let's go to the day that the song started. Do you remember how that day began? Me and Andrew Watt and Circuit, we were actually working on another song that didn't end up on the album. It was like a mid-tempo thing. But then Circuit was like, I've got something I've been working on. I wanted to play it for you.

5:07And I went up right away. I was like, what is that? That is crazy. And we just stopped everything that we were doing. Andrew was like, that could be a hard beat to write over because it's so busy. Yeah. And I was like, watch me. Because that kind of electronic chaos, that kind of like razor sharp thing just speaks to my soul so deeply.

5:46How would you articulate the feeling that you had when you first heard this beat? It's a feeling of your heart racing as fast as possible. Some adrenaline, excitement, deep thrill, and freedom.

6:06It almost reminded me of how I used to feel when I went out at night alone in my early 20s. I would just, like, have nothing to do but discover the night. like what music was I going to hear what DJs were going to be playing like what cool artists was I going to run into it was really nostalgic but it was still really modern and I was also excited for the challenge because I could hear there was something special in what he had created but that it also needed to become a fully formed song. So I just started writing. We turned it on and I just got on the mic. Like freestyling. Oh yeah. A lot of my music, especially when we work to track is freestyled and it happens pretty quickly, but it didn't have words yet.

7:01It was just kind of made up words. Yeah. And then me and Andrew went into this room here and we started to work on a pre-chorus. And we had to build the chord structure to come out of that beat because it's got to match circuits, atonal bass lines. It has to grow out of that dissonance and that tension. like what is going to make it open because that beat in a way is kind of closed. Yeah. So what was going to happen to open up the song? But we did it at the piano with the guitar.

7:50It had this kind of gothic quality to it. What were the first words that you wrote? It was like a poem said by a lady in red. You hear the last few words of your life. Like a poem said by a lady in red, you hear the last few words of your life. I remember thinking of like being at a party and somebody kind of lording over the party saying like, I'm going to decide how your evening goes. I'm going to control the whole thing. I will be in charge of whether or not you fall in love or you get too messed up to even make it home. When you were thinking of that image, which side of that did you relate to more?

8:36Was that person who's kind of lording over the party, is that a figure that you usually are at a party, or are you usually the person on the other side being like, okay, what's going to happen? When we were writing it, I was imagining I was at the party and I was being kind of beset upon by this figure that was inclined to torture me into having the night of my life. Is that an experience that you feel like you've had where you've been subject to someone else's setup? Yes. Lady Gaga's setup. Huh. you know, for a long time, keeping up with that side of myself. You know, like if you're never dropping your stage persona and we all have like a public facing persona that, and if you just never drop it and if it has an edge to it, you know, too much of anything is bad.

9:37But then And sometimes our dark side, it like really challenges us and makes us great because we learn a lot. I actually think part of what mayhem is about is the duality of me being both of these people. It's interesting because you both refer to it as torture, but also the night of your life. Yeah. Well, those are some of my issues for sure. But I think in the context of the world that you'd constructed for yourself, the rigor that you'd made for yourself by inventing Lady Gaga and then having to live up to that, I could see how both of those things would apply. Well, you know, as someone that played classical piano since I was really little and I had a lot of really strict teachers and went to ballet and, you know, all my disciplines, I will say that like there is a kind of suffering in discipline when you're working really hard.

10:38And I think I just took that to a really far degree in my work my whole life. and I became kind of someone that thrived on intensity. I think that this song is definitely grappling with intensity. It's a test, but it's also kind of not up to you. I think that's a lot how I feel about being an artist. I don't really feel like I fully chose this. If I was a tree, it would be like someone just grabbed the trunk and just said, this is where you're going to grow. So the abracadabra piece, it's a spell that this lady in red is casting on the listener, on the nightclub. And that pre-chorus, it's a ritual.

11:31It's like, I'm going to read you this poem and we're going to have a ceremony and we're going to see how tough you are.

11:46So we had written a chord progression that we then gave to Circuit to put into the track to open up into a chorus.

12:09and I started just going abracadabra and I was saying abracadabra over and over again at first but I was so excited about making up my own words that it could be anything because it was this spell? Like, what would this spell even be? But I knew that death and love was something that I wanted to be like at the helm of what this lady in red was saying to the room. And so I started thinking about Latin and Italian and what would be like the Gothic romance words, like mort in In French is death. So then I was asking Paul, our engineer, to look up different words. And then he was like, morta is the god of death.

12:58We spent a couple days carving out every single word.

13:10But in order for me to really know that it was lyrically right, I wanted to hear it with all the harmonies. Abracadabra, amor unalna. Abracadabra, morta ugaga. Abracadabra, abra unalna. In her tongue she said, death or love tonight. I couldn't hear it without it. Yeah. Because the magic and the glamour of the song is in how gaudy it is in the chorus. and I couldn't hear if it was the right words until it was fully opulent. My conversation with Lady Gaga continues after this.

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16:27What was so deeply inside of me when I was writing is some of New York. In New York, the spirit of ballroom culture is something that I have always admired and has been deeply meaningful to me my whole life as an artist. And the LGBTQ plus community and the way that I've been embraced as a human being and been accepted as a young person. I've like found my people. And I think there is something about this spell that's also speaking to being a resilient person and being inspired by resilient people and what it means to be tested constantly in your life and to say, I'm up for the challenge. I'm going to do this.

17:19so when we eventually got to the verses it actually became very spiritual and it became about resilience pay the toll to the angels drawing circles in the clouds and then it was less about this being like completely grim this story and more of a dance club anthem Keep your mind on the distance when the devil turns around. What were you imagining with those lyrics? It's what do you have to do to keep going, to get to the next phase. As you're headed toward all the good in your life and the devil's on your back, like, don't turn around. And what about the way you delivered those lines? What were you thinking about for that?

18:13Vocally, this song was, it's an interesting performance. I actually think that the thing that I was channeling the most was a kind of metal gravitas, but in a pop way. So I was sort of trying to marry what I would imagine it would have sounded like if Iron Maiden was doing the song. Yeah, I can see that. They had like a sense of authority. Right. Authority is the right word. Keep your mind on the distance when the devil turns around. And then we put that into Circuit's track and then he was building it even more. We actually went through like three different versions of production and we ultimately ended in like a house style.

19:15I remember being like emotional when we decided to do that because I was like, this is right. Because everything for me always went back to the dance floor. So it was completely full circle. And that lyric right after, hold me in your heart tonight in the magic of the dark moonlight. Like, that's sort of like acknowledging that sometimes our demons can be our friends because we know them so well. Like, I'm going to be there for you when you go through this. Hold me in your heart tonight in the magic of the dark moonlight. Save me from this empty fight. I also wanted to ask you about this sound.

20:02It sort of twists and morphs, and in some ways it's almost more like sound design. Circuit made that. There's like an element that's descending and ascending at the same time.

20:16Yeah, sounds like the club's going to explode. We just were really open to trying different ways to making it feel chaotic. That played a huge role in everything that we did. There was always something distorting in some way or bending, building the tension that would release.

20:55It just started to get crazier and crazier. And by the bridge, when we got to the bridge, I became a completely different person.

21:22It wasn't like I was like, oh, I think we should do opera here. Like, I just started singing that way. This ending is this huge crescendo.

21:50For all the stuff that was happening fast and intuitively, were there any parts of the song that felt like you really had to labor over it to get right? I would say the second verse, the lyric, No Return. Don't waste time on a feeling

22:13I changed that lyric after the song was mixed because it was don't waste time on a feeling, use your passion, it's your turn. And I like called everybody into the studio and I was like, we have to change this. This is wrong. Why was it wrong? Because it's your turn, I felt was signaling something that the song was kind of already saying. We knew we were up for the test. And you don't want a second verse that's like sort of revisiting the first verse and not going anywhere new. But no return. It was raising the stakes like you can't give up. And the song didn't have that in it yet. And what was also bugging me for a while was Choose the Road on the West Side as the dust flies, watch it burn.

23:15Because it was such a metal lyric. And I'm like, is this just wrong for what this song could be? Because there's so much about Abracadabra that is just not what anyone would think of as what would be on the radio or streaming. I mean, it's like not easy listening. It's got all these niche references and it's so maximalist and loud.

23:52And so during the songwriting process, I'm battling a lot of judgment, inner judgment. I'm judging myself for what I've created. But that was what it was supposed to be. It has all of the pieces of something that is quintessentially me. the intervals of the melody the made-up words the fantastic idea mixed with these heavy dance beats with rock instrumentation like this blend of things is what lady gaga is to me it's almost like if you had one chance to architect a building to show who you are, but you were desperate for people to know. Yeah. So you just like put gargoyles and columns and marble and grass and there's a lake.

24:53And it's just because you're just trying to say, I'm everything. I'm all these things. Yeah. So I was judging myself. And then I sort of accepted who I am through the process and became okay with it.

25:09And what I found that day was an understanding of a challenge that I had been a part of for so long that I had been so afraid of acknowledging and knowing. And I finally like put a name to it all. It has helped me to take ownership over something that used to run my life in a negative way. You know, it's like you create yourself. I made Lady Gaga, but then like people reflect back to you what they think. They have maybe a fantasy of you or dreams for you that are not yours. But I took back the dreams that were mine. And what I realized is that the biggest dream that I had was being myself as an artist.

26:05And now, here's Abracadabra by Lady Gaga in its entirety.

26:31clouds keep your mind on the distance when the devil turns around hold me in your heart tonight in the magic of the dark moonlight save me from this empty fight In the game of life Like a poem set by a lady in red You hear the last few words of your life With a haunting dance Now you're both in a trance It's time to cast your spell on the night Abra-kut-abra, amor-unana Abra-kut-abra, or-bra-u-ga-ga Apropodabra, apropodabra In her tongue she said, Death or love tonight